REAL PEOPLE, REAL ISSUES

November 2009

November 28, 2009

Always one of the more controversial categories, best new artist remains, perhaps, the most difficult Grammy field to get just right. The vaguely defined category is open to interpretation. Reads the Grammy rules: "A new artist is defined as any performing artist who releases, during the eligibility year, the recording that first establishes the public identity of that artist as a performer." The "recording" in question doesn't have to be a full album, either. Witness alterna-rockers MGMT, which are on the ballot for the upcoming Grammy Awards, but released their "Oracular Spectacular" during last year's eligibility period. It's also the field, perhaps, most easy to criticize. For the 2009 awards, the Jonas Brothers managed to nab a best new artist nod, but the young Disney rockers had scored high-charting albums in prior eligibility periods. On the flip side, however, it's one of the few Grammy categories where there are bound to be genuine surprises. R&B newcomer Jazmine Sullivan was an artist who rode some late-year success straight to a nomination for the 2009 awards. Looking at the ballots for the 2010 Grammys, nominations for which will be announced next Wednesday, here's a look at the front-runners for best new artist. Pop & Hiss encourages comments, and please note this is only Part 1 of the best new artist run-down. Come back later this holiday week for Part 2. Continue reading »

AUBURN, Ala. (AP) -- No. 2 Alabama found its championship form in the nick of time. Outplayed most of the game, the Crimson Tide stayed unbeaten with a 26-21 victory Friday over Auburn, taking the lead with a nearly perfect drive that was capped by Greg McElroy's 4-yard touchdown pass to Roy Upchurch with 1:24 left. Alabama (12-0, 8-0 Southeastern Conference) to complete a second straight perfect regular season, but did it the hard way against its bitter rival. The Tide fell behind in the opening minutes, but came out ahead to do its part to set up 1 vs. 2 showdown with top-ranked Florida in the SEC championship game. But forget the national and league championship, the state title almost slipped away. Auburn (7-5, 3-5) pushed the ball to the Alabama 37 on the final drive, but Chris Todd's pass to the end zone was batted down by the Tide defense.oth No. 3 Texas and No. 2 Alabama remained on track for a possible appearance in the Bowl Championship Series title game with uninspired victories this week. The Longhorns needed a Heisman-worthy performance from Colt McCoy to escape College Station with a49-39 victory over unranked Texas A&M on Thursday night. The Crimson Tide were trailing late against its fierce rival, Auburn, before coming back for a 26-21 win Friday. The less-than-impressive victories have some questioning why the Longhorns and the Tide (or its SEC counterpart, Florida) seem predetermined to make the B.C.S. title game, especially when there are undefeated teams like Cincinnati, Texas Christian and Boise State. CONTINUE READING...

Calling this the greatest Saints team ever assembled isn’t high praise. There are few challengers for the title: the Dome Patrol team coached by Jim Mora the Elder in the early 1990s and the post-Katrina 2006 upstarts, who were like Australopithecus to this year’s more evolved Homo habilis. The 2009 Saints are two victories from the franchise record, and their first playoff win will be the third in team history.

The current Saints merit comparison to great non-Saints teams of recent history. Boston-area fans bristle at comparisons to the 2007 Patriots, but the Saints’ undefeated record, deep roster of offensive stars and ability to overwhelm opponents looks familiar.

Bill Belichick, who hopes to end all undefeated talk on Monday night, compared the Saints to another great offense. “They kind of look, in some ways, a little bit like the Rams did back in 2001,” he said. Always careful with his message (when he deigns to deliver one), Belichick didn’t chose the 1999 Rams championship team, but the 2001 team that lost the Super Bowl to his Patriots.

New Orleans has not been truly tested all season. Games that looked tough on the schedule (against the Eagles, the Giants, the Dolphins and the Falcons) were just pop quizzes against the N.F.L.’s petite bourgeoisie. The Patriots are among the league’s ruling class, so Monday’s game offers our best indication of what the Saints can do against the Vikings in the playoffs or against the A.F.C.’s standard-bearers in the Super Bowl.

Tiger Woods, the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer, was injured early Friday in a one-car accident in front of his home, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. His wife broke the back window of his vehicle with a golf club to help get him out of the car, according to a local police chief.Woods was leaving his home at 2:25 a.m. Friday in the Isleworth community in Windermere, an Orlando suburb, when the Cadillac Escalade he was driving struck a fire hydrant and drove into a neighbor’s tree. His spokesman said that Woods, 33, was treated and released from Health Central Hospital in Ocoee in good condition.

Windermere’s police chief, Daniel Saylor, said officers found Woods lying in the street and his wife, Elin, with him. “She was frantic, upset,” Saylor said in a briefing Friday night. “It was her husband laying on the ground.”

Woods had lacerations to his upper and lower lips, and he had blood in his mouth, Saylor said. Woods’s wife told officers she was in the house when she heard the accident and “came out and broke the back window with a golf club,” Saylor said, adding that the front-door windows were not broken and that “the door was probably locked.”

Saylor added: “She supposedly got him out and laid him on the ground. He was in and out of consciousness when my guys got there.”

He said the officers treated Woods for 10 minutes until an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. Woods was conscious enough to speak, he said. “He was mumbling, but didn’t say anything coherent,” Saylor said.

The highway patrol incident report originally listed Woods’s condition as serious — a highway patrol spokesman told The Orlando Sentinel that that is customary when a patient is transported to a hospital — but Woods’s spokesman, Glenn Greenspan, issued a statement saying Woods was in good condition.

The highway patrol said that alcohol was not involved in the accident, although it remained under investigation and charges could be filed. CONTINUE READING...

WASHINGTON — President Obama and his wife, Michelle, had a face-to-face encounter with the couple who sneaked into a state dinner at the White House this week, White House officials acknowledged on Friday. The revelation underscored the seriousness of the security breach and prompted an abject apology from the Secret Service.A White House spokesman said that the couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi of Virginia, met and shook hands with the president and the first lady in the receiving line in the Blue Room, as the Obamas greeted each of their 400 invited guests Tuesday night before moving to a tent on the South Lawn for dinner.

That disclosure coincided with a statement from the director of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan, saying that his agency was “deeply concerned and embarrassed” by the events. Secret Service officials said the agency wanted to interview everyone connected with the episode, including the Salahis, and had not ruled out criminal charges.

“The preliminary findings of our internal investigation have determined established protocols were not followed at an initial checkpoint, verifying that two individuals were on the guest list,” Mr. Sullivan said.“Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, they should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely,” Mr. Sullivan said. “That failing is ours.”

On Friday night, the White House released a photograph of the couple in the receiving line, being greeted by Mr. Obama. In the photo, a smiling Mrs. Salahi, wearing a red and gold sari, is clasping Mr. Obama’s hand with both of hers, as her husband looks on. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is standing next to Mr. Obama.

WITH all the multi-disc jazz boxes that have come out in recent years — the complete Miles Davis on Columbia, the complete Charlie Parkeron Savoy, the complete Duke Ellington on RCA and so on — it’s hard to believe that any significant tapes by any major musician might still be languishing undiscovered in a record company’s archives.Yet Verve has just released “Twelve Nights in Hollywood,” a four-CD boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald singing 76 songs at the Crescendo, a small jazz club in Los Angeles, in 1961 and ’62 — and none of it has ever been released until now.

These aren’t bootlegs; the CDs were mastered from the original tapes, which were produced by Norman Granz, Verve’s founder and Fitzgerald’s longtime manager.

They capture the singer in her peak years, and at top form: more relaxed, swinging and adventurous, across a wider span of rhythms and moods, than on the dozens of other albums that hit the bins in her lifetime.

Richard Seidel, the producer of the boxed set, first heard the tapes early this year. He was driving to Massachusetts from his home in New Jersey and brought along some rough CD transfers to play in the car.

“I was feeling kind of down that day,” he recalled, “and the more I listened, I could not help but start to smile. I’ve worked on dozens of Ella projects over the years, but there was something different about this one — the sheer rhythmic joy she projects, the endlessly inventive improvising.”

There’s nothing rare about a joyous Ella Fitzgerald recording; the woman exuded joy in nearly every note she sang. Yet the level on these sessions soared higher and plumbed deeper.

Gary Giddins, the veteran critic and author of “Jazz,” agrees. “This ranks on the top shelf of her live recordings,” he said. “It’s about as good as it gets.”

Why these tapes stayed locked in the vault for nearly half a century — and what it took to set them free — is a tale of a producer’s neglect, a jazz sleuth’s obsession and a string of happy coincidences. CONTINUE READING...

THE LGBT RECORDING ACADEMY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH LOGO/MTV NETWORKPRESENTS THE 2009 OUTMUSIC AWARDS THE BIGGEST NIGHT IN LGBT MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT WILL ROCK NEW YORK CITY'S LEGENDARY WEBSTER HALL TUESDAY, DEC. 8, 2009

POLITICAL HUMORIST KATE CLINTON AND NOAH'S ARC'S RODNEY CHESTER

WILL HOST THIS NIGHT OF RECOGNITION OF LGBT MUSICAL EXCELLENCE

New York, NY (November 18, 2009) - The OUTMusic LGBT Recording Academy and its Board of Directors today announced that the 2009 OUTMusic Awards will take center stage at New York City's legendary Grand Ballroom of Webster Hall on Tuesday, December 8th at 8 p.m. The 2009 OUTMusic Awards will be hosted by Kate Clinton and Rodney Chester. This year's milestone celebration will recognize and celebrate musical excellence while featuring performances from some of the hottest names in LGBT music. Nominations for the 2009 OutMusic Awards can be viewed at www.outmusic.com/awards.html.

"We have cultivated new partnerships with some amazing organizations that know of our struggle," said Diedra Meredith, OUTMusic executive director. It is my hope to create an equivalent presence in the music industry for these amazing artists and performers through the OUTMusic Awards. I've been waiting all my life for this moment to arrive! Our community is tenaciously strong, it's been a long tough road, but with the OUTMusic Awards, we will make history during a time when LGBT Equal Rights is gaining momentum! This is our entry into the fight for LGBT Equal Rights."

This special night of celebration for LGBT recording artists will be filled with celebrity presenters to honor openly gay recording artists for their achievements and courage to be OUT and proud through their free expression of music. Throughout the night, special presentations will be made to Kevin Aviance, who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and Toshi Reagon with the Heritage Award. Also, the late Willie Ninja will be named OUTMusic Icon for his worldwide, inspirational, innovative and trendsetting contribution to the artistry of Vogue, fashion and performance. OUTMusic will also honor founders Dan Martin and Michael Biello with the Visionary Award.

The 2009 OUTMusic Awards Pre-Show will be hosted by Julie Goldman of LOGO's Big Gay Sketch Show and DeMarco Majors of LOGO's "Shirts and Skins." DJ Shane Phoenix and the Rickster of Q Nation FM's hit radio show "Q's In The Biz" will broadcast LIVE from the Red Carpet and can be seen on www.qsinthebiz.com. DJ Stacy will broadcast LIVE from the Red Carpet on Girlscenenyc.com her popular show "Listen 2 Me" presented by JAMBOX.

For this year's awards, OUTMusic has partnered with LOGO/MTV Networks to create three new, special award categories for those artists who have befriended the LGBT community and are seen as tastemakers by the LGBT community. The three award categories included NEXT GAY ICON, FIERCELY FASHIONABLE and KEEP BRINGIN SEXY BACK. The winner will be determined by the number of votes received by fans of the artists. To vote for your favorite artist in each category, please log onto www.logoonline.com.

The evening will be filled with some of the best recording artists in the LGBT entertainment industry including a spectacular opening performance by Christine Martucci, whose song "There You Are" has been chosen as the theme song for the 2009 OMA. Also, performances by Jason Walker, Toshi Reagon, R&B crooner Nhojj, Rachael Sage, Jasper James, Levi Kreis, Deepa Soul and Kevin Aviance. Also, a Gay Hip-Hop Evolution segment will feature Tori Fixx, J.R., Soce The Elemental Wizard,Mack Mistress and Da Fresh Geex.

Tickets for the 2009 OMAs can be pre-purchased for $25.00. Special Group discounts of 10 or more are available. Please visit www.outmusic.com to purchase tickets. Tickets will also be available at the door for $40.00.

November 23, 2009

“American Idol” sometimes get criticized for cranking out safe, digestible, inoffensive pop stars. But this year’s runner-up, Adam Lambert, did his best to break out of that rap with his ultra-lewd closing performance of “For Your Entertainment.” ABC censors had to quick-cut to an odd aerial shot of the audience when Lambert had a male backup dancer simulate oral sex on him midsong. Parents may be outraged, but thank God for that. We were thinking music was getting a little too stale. VOTE: Provocative or porn?

We know she has a greatest hits album coming out, but just six months after Michael Jackson's death, performances by Jacksons should still retain some kind of kinetic energy. Her moving tribute to her brother opening the Video Music Awards in September was great. Janet's opening medley of her own hits turned into a live variation of those late-night compilation album ads. The only thing missing was the song titles scrolling on-screen.

Don’t get us wrong – Kelly Clarkson’s performance of “Already Gone” was nice. And it appeared she was singing it live and not lip synching. But was that all it took to garner a standing ovation at the end? Is so, then the AMAs needs to turn off the tape decks. We’re all getting too cynical.

We know it’s their big hit, but why did they have to perform "Empire State of Mind" right here in L.A.? Angelenos have to deal with New Yorkers praising their coast all day long; we don’t need it in our awards shows too.

Normally we’d be scandalized that a young actress was standing on stage about to fall out of her dress on national TV, but it didn’t appear anything was going to fall out of Kate Hudson’s very low-cut outfit. Ever.

What’s going on with Rascall Flats? The group took the stage to accept its award for favorite country band/duo/group but members spent the majority of those precious minutes thanking their accountant for “taking out taxes on everything we do.” Hopefully what sounded like a lesson learned from Willie Nelson was just the result of these guys getting old.

Wow, Janet Jackson looked pretty old school tonight in her head to toe dance gear (Ugg-style boots included). That’s because the latest trend is scantily clad singers backed by dancers in barely there black getups. Maybe it was Beyonce who started it with her “Singles Ladies” video, but now everyone from Shakira to Carrie Underwood are jumping on the bandwagon. While Shakira’s crew wore body-hugging leotard style dance costumes, Underwood’s group gave a near repeat of last week’s CMA performance. Lingerie and all.

We wish there was more to say about Whitney Houston. She took the stage, sang her R.Kelly tune “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” and graciously accepted the International Artist Award presented by Samuel L. Jackson. Where was the whole diva song and dance? A medley of her hit songs or a duet with her daughter Bobbi Kristina (rumored to be an aspiring musician)?

Touted as the main event of the night, Lopez made her way to the stage-turned-ring covered by a robe while famed boxing announcer Michael Buffer gave his signature line “Let’s get ready to rumble!” It wasn't a total knockout, but the boxing routine was going OK until Lopez took a tumble. The mother of two was using her backup dancers like a flight of stairs and when she went to jump off, she landed on her booty. A true pro, she bounced back and even managed a wardrobe change afterward. We can only imagine the sparring gear to glam gold mini-dress transformation included a pair of Christian Louboutins.

The only one who can top Lady Gaga’s bizarre performances is the pop icon herself. For the AMAs it was full body pantyhose accessorized with a skeleton-like head, chest and foot gear. As if her fashion antics weren’t enough, Gaga later smashed a window with a mike stand, sang on a stage set ablaze and busted up bottles against her piano.

Rihanna had ‘em, Shakira had ‘em, Carrie Underwood had ‘em, pictured, and when J. Lo wanted ‘em, she had to go to the gym and recruit boxers because there probably weren’t enough to go around. When a performer is going into a live awards show performance these days, it seems they don’t do it without a whole raft of backup dancers. So you think you can dance? Good, ‘cause the Grammys are coming up soon.

ermaine Jackson was really enjoying the spotlight tonight as he accepted Michael Jackson’s Favorite Male Artist awards for both pop and soul/R&B. The first time he took the stage, he brought his own kids along including his son Jermajesty (where were the Prince Michaels and Paris?). With the next award it was Jermaine thanking everyone from Dick Clark to Larry Klein to his own family, with Michael almost an afterthought. Now, we really can’t wait to see the buzzed-about Jacksons reality show. SOURCE OF THIS POST

November 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Saturday to begin full debate on major health care legislation, propelling President Obama’s
top domestic initiative over a crucial, preliminary hurdle in a
formidable display of muscle-flexing by the Democratic majority.

“Tonight we have the opportunity, the historic opportunity to reform health care once and for all,” said Senator Max Baucus,
Democrat of Montana, and a chief architect of the legislation. “History
is knocking on the door. Let’s open it. Let’s begin the debate.”

The
60-to-39 vote, along party lines, clears the way for weeks of rowdy
floor proceedings that will begin after Thanksgiving and last through
much of December. But even as the Democrats succeeded in uniting their
caucus by winning over the last two holdouts, big disagreements
remained, making final approval of the bill far from certain.

Two reluctant Democratic senators, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln
of Arkansas, warned that their support for a motion to open debate did
not guarantee that they would ultimately vote for the bill. Their
remarks echoed previous comments by several other senators, including
Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

Those
comments made clear that more horse-trading lies ahead and that major
changes might be required if the bill is to be approved. And it
suggested that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid
of Nevada, who relied only on members aligned with his party to bring
the bill to the floor, may yet have to sway one or more Republicans to
his side to get the bill adopted.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said his party’s opposition would persist. “The battle has just begun,” he said.

In
a rare ceremonial gesture reserved for major votes, senators cast their
yeas and nays from their desks in the chamber, each one rising to voice
his or her position. Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio,
was not present and did not vote. CONTINUE READING...

MSNBC Pressures Obama From LeftWhile the administration's feud with Fox News has received most of the attention, progressive hosts on MSNBC are making sure the White House knows when they aren't happy.Read original story in The New York Times | Monday, Nov. 16, 2009

November 19, 2009

Oprah Winfrey plans to end her syndicated television show in September 2011, as she turns her efforts toward a new cable-television channel she plans to launch with Discovery Communications Inc.Ms. Winfrey told her staff of her decision on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. Winfrey plans to make an official announcement on her talk show Friday morning, according to a spokeswoman.The move is a big blow to the syndicated television market, in which Ms. Winfrey has grown to become a juggernaut. "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which launched in syndication in 1986, attracted 6.6. million viewers for the week ended November 8, according to Nielsen Co. Local television stations, which use Ms. Winfrey to anchor their daytime hours, could also smart from Ms. Winfrey's decision. Her show has been one of the few whose ad rates have held steady in the recession, according to one ad buyer."In our market she does extremely well and always has," said Barry Smith, director of programming and creative services for KFMB-TV, a CBS affiliate in San Diego, Calif., owned by Midwest Television Inc. "It's going to be a task" to replace her, Mr. Smith added.The news was first reported on the Web site of a local ABC station that airs the show, New York's WABC-TV. Ms. Winfrey's decision also represents a hit to CBS Corp., which distributes Ms. Winfrey's show in syndication. "We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards as well," the company said in a statement supplied by a spokesman. Ms. Winfrey is likely to turn her attention to her new television network, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, which she announced with cable programmer Discovery Communications in January of 2008. The new channel is structured as a 50-50 joint venture between Ms. Winfrey and Discovery, and includes Oprah.com."I will be involved in every single element of programming," Ms. Winfrey said in an interview with the Journal at the time. Since then, the network has seen its launch pushed back. In January, OWN hired former MTV president Christina Norman to be chief executive. She took over from former Viacom Chief Executive and MTV veteran Tom Freston, who has quietly served as a consultant for the network, according to people familiar with the situation. SOURCE OF THIS POST

November 17, 2009

If President Obama happened to glance at “The Rachel MaddowShow” last Monday, he might have winced.Ms. Maddow pretended to celebrate the passage of a health care overhaul bill in the House, calling it “potentially a huge generational win for theDemocratic Party” — but then halted the triumphant music and called it an “electoral defeat.” The Stupak amendment, she said, was “the biggest restriction on abortion rights in a generation.” Then she wondered aloud about the consequences for Democrats “if they don’t get women or anybody who’s pro-choice to ever vote for them again.” She returned to the subject the next four evenings in a row. This is how it looks to have a television network pressuring President Obama from the left. While much attention has been paid to the feud between the Fox News Channel and the White House, the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from Ms. Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other progressive hosts on MSNBC, who are using their nightly news-and-views-casts to measure what she calls “the distance between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.”

While they may agree with much of what Mr. Obama says, they have pressed him to keep his campaign promises about health care, civil liberties and other issues. “I don’t think our audience is looking for unequivocal ‘rah-rah,’ ” said Ms. Maddow, who calls herself a liberal but not a Democrat.

The spectacle of Democrats sniping at one another is not new, but having a TV home for it is. MSNBC — sometimes critically called the “home team” for supporters of Mr. Obama — has even hit upon the theme with a promotional tagline, “pushing back on the president,” in commercials for “Hardball,” Chris Matthews’s political hour. CONTINUE READING...

Franco Wicks is the sort of ferociously funny, privately pained character that any rising Hollywood star would love to play — and on Broadway no less, in this fall’s production of "Superior Donuts."Instead Franco is being played, to acclaim, by an actor who is virtually unknown in New York or Los Angeles, Jon Michael Hill. His is one of the few current Broadway play ensembles that lack a big-name star.et among this 24-year-old actor’s colleagues at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, where “Donuts” originated in the summer of 2008, Mr. Hill was an incentive for joining the play, Tracy Letts’s follow-up to his Tony Award-winning “August: Osage County.” “Jon was one reason I said, ‘Count me in,’ ” said Tina Landau, a Steppenwolf ensemble member who directed the play in Chicago and New York. “He’s completely mercurial. He can do everything and its opposite. That’s so exciting to see in a young actor.”

For Mr. Hill, who is making his Broadway debut, the role is an opportunity to play a struggling, young African-American who wants to make his mark in a world where many of his peers are poor, discarded, or maimed by violence. These are young men Mr. Hill sees on the nightly news and knew while growing up in Waukegan, Ill., and whose stories deserve to be heard by an audience, he said. CONTINUE READING..

YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and TheSan Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers.The new feature, to be formally introduced on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners. “We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics. With the tool, YouTube, a unit of Google, seeks to further portray itself as an ally of media companies and other news gatherers. YouTube Direct could also bolster the Web site’s status as a source for citizen journalism video. The site has offered newsworthy clips during political crises, as in Iran’s disputed election this year, and after other breaking news events. The tool could become a challenger to existing citizen journalism sites like iReport on CNN, where eyewitnesses can upload video of news events as well as their own opinions.

When users go to the Web sites of Politico or The Chronicle, for instance, they will be able to upload to YouTube and flag their video for review by the publication’s editors, who will have the ability to approve or reject the submissions. CONTINUE READING

The New Black Panther Party catapulted itself to national attention during the November 2008 presidential election when two of its members, one brandishing a nightstick, were captured on videotape intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place. But the original Black Panther Party, which famously advocated black power and preached self-defense through confrontation in the 1960s and 1970s, is not happy with the new upstart. It has condemned the New Black Panther Party and its tactics, saying the NBPP "stole" the party's name for its "own misguided purposes." The Huey P. Newton Foundation Inc., created in 1993 and co-founded by Fredrika Newton, Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton's widow, said in a statement that the original party was "never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the white establishment ... but operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people. "As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the foundation, which includes former leading members of the party, denounces this group's exploitation of the party's name and history," the statement said. "Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the party's name upon itself, which we condemn. CONTINUE READING...

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit on behalf of Native American activists who claimed that the Washington Redskins' team name is so offensive that it does not deserve trademark protection.

NEW YORK -- Shepard Smith had barely started his program when a Fox News producer told him that their reporter had snagged an interview with Chris Christie, the challenger locked in a tight race with New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

SANAA, YEMEN -- In his first interview with a journalist since the Fort Hood rampage, Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi said that he neither ordered nor pressured Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to harm Americans, but that he considered himself a confidant of the Army psychiatrist who was given a glimp...

ST. LOUIS -- Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.

For one Indian summer afternoon at FedEx Field on Sunday, the Redskins let Washington put on rose-colored NFL glasses that, for now, alter the hue of a dismal season. With a 27-17 win over Denver, full of battering runs by Ladell Betts and a trick-field-goal touchdown bomb by a punter named Hunte...

November 11, 2009

By ANDREW BARKER ~ A classic study in extremes, Chicago native Robert Kelly is the
auteur of some of the most silkily aphrodisiacal randb produced since
the Isley Brothers discovered synthesizers, as well as the most
alarmingly unhinged RandB since Screamin' Jay Hawkins first emerged
from an onstage coffin. The Jekyll-Hyde tension between these two
personae informs most of his best music, and though last night's
alternately frustrating and fascinating show at the Nokia Theater tried
hard to solely showcase the former, it ended up accidentally revealing
a whole new side to the singer - R. Kelly the irrepressible goofball.

For
his current tour in advance of a purportedly back-to-basics new record,
Kelly steered clear of the paranoid psych-ward operettas "Real Talk"
and "Trapped in the Closet" that he composed during the height of his
legal troubles, when it appeared he had nothing to lose. While his
reputation has been largely rehabilitated since his acquittal, one has
to wonder if he's genuinely interested in playing the traditional
heartthrob role anymore, having tasted the freedom of being RandB's
poete maudit.

That question felt unavoidable during the early
portion of Thursday's 90-minute show, a frantic cabaret-style run
through truncated versions of recent hits like "I'm a Flirt" and
"Freaky in the Club," as well as snippets from his contributions to
songs by Young Jeezy and the Notorious B.I.G. The songs themselves were
mostly played for the initial roar of recognition from the crowd, with
Kelly almost immediately veering off-script into bizarre adlibs and
improvs while his eight-piece band scrambled to keep up.

(Most
jaw-dropping were Kelly's sung instructions to his stagehands -
"Somebody move this goddamn rug / I almost tripped three times" - which
he repeated with increasing soulfulness until one nearly forgot that it
was not, strictly speaking, an actual song.)

It was a ceaselessly
entertaining spectacle, but it also sold the strength of Kelly's
songwriting short - in particular, there's no excuse for chopping
"Ignition (Remix)," arguably the RandB song of the '00s, down to a
minute-long tease. It wasn't until two-thirds of the way through that
he really hit his stride with a simmering, expansive take on
pro-infidelity anthem "Down Low (Nobody Has to Know)." Yet this
seriousness was short lived, as he soon interrupted an otherwise
faithful "Feelin' on Yo Booty" by inexplicably making motorboat noises
in lieu of singing. One sensed that he truly just couldn't help himself. CONTINUE READING..

September 2012

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